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Search engine optimization is something that has been around for quite some time but it is a constantly changing environment.  Whenever the Internet was still new, people would exchange links with each other in a one-to-one fashion and the search engines would gobble them up.  Not only that, it was possible for you to rank highly for some very competitive keywords just by exchanging links with other websites.  At that particular time, it really didn’t matter who you were exchanging links with or how many links you exchanged, it was more of a free-for-all than anything else.

Since those days, the way that people link has really changed.  Incoming links to your website are still a very important part of any good search engine optimization campaign.  The fact of the matter is, you really can not rank as well if you are only exchanging links with other websites.  In order to really get the most power out of your incoming links, you need to make sure that they are one way and preferably from websites that are related to yours.  Although there are a lot of different ways that people do this, one of the best ways is by putting out some link bait and allowing it to work for you.

Link bait is really nothing more than content that is interesting enough that people will want to link to it naturally.  You can put this content up on your blog or you can build static webpages that contains it, either one will work very well.  The most important part about this content is that it needs to be interesting so that people will link to it.  If it is just your normal, run-of-the-mill content, people are going to read it and ignore it.  The best way to make sure that your link bait is effective is to either make it humorous or controversial.

Once you have your link bait page up and running, you need to get some initial traffic to it in order to get the ball rolling.  If you are effective in writing this type of content, it becomes viral in nature once the links start coming in.  The best way for you to be able to do this is to post it on some of the blog posting websites such as a digg.com.  If your website gets additional digs as a result of it being on there, they can stay at the top of the list for quite some time and the flood of traffic that you will be getting is phenomenal.  You should also make sure that you’re using stumbleupon.com as this can send an additional stream of traffic to your website.

Although this type of linking is good, the real benefit will come whenever people start referring to your page on their blog or website.  This is where the real search engine optimization benefits come from and it can pull your listings up through the search engines very quickly.

To your success!

Guido Nussbaum